Gordon Brown has exhibited a "Stalinist ruthlessness" in government,
belittling his cabinet colleagues whom the Treasury treats with "more
or less complete contempt", according to the man who was Britain's top
civil servant until two years ago.

In an interview with the
Financial Times, Lord Turnbull, permanent secretary to the Treasury for
four years under Mr Brown before becoming cabinet secretary in 2002,
accused the prime minister-in-waiting of a "very cynical view of
mankind and his colleagues".

"He
cannot allow them any serious discussion about priorities. His view is
that it is just not worth it and 'they will get what I decide'. And
that is a very insulting process," Lord Turnbull said.

"Do those
ends justify the means? It has enhanced Treasury control, but at the
expense of any government cohesion and any assessment of strategy. You
can choose whether you are impressed or depressed by that, but you
cannot help admirethe sheer Stalinist ruthlessness of it all."

Lord Turnbull praised achievements including the independence of the Bank of
England, the three-year spending round, much of the fiscal framework
and targets for departments, which had been "a net strong plus" and
"quite a revolutionary step".

But Lord Turnbull noted that Bank of England independence would have suited Mr Brown by allowing him to disavow responsibility for interest rate rises. "The chancellor has a
Macavity quality. He is not there when there is dirty work to be done."

...In some areas, Lord Turnbull said, the Treasury had become itself the
policymaker and guardian over a set of policies such as tax credits.
The chancellor, he said, had kept control of those budgets "entirely to
himself".

"That has been impressive, but in a sense
reprehensible. There has been an absolute ruthlessness with which
Gordon has played the denial of information as an instrument of power."

Departments learned only just before Budgets "this is what you are getting and here are your public service agreements".

Such comments are unusually direct for a former senior civil servant. But should we really be surprised? Political leaders do tend to be strong-willed and at times ruthless. They don't get to the top by being nice. Margaret Thatcher's abrasive and autocratic leadership style has been roundly condemned, as has Tony Blair's 'sofa cabinet'. Chicken Yoghurt agrees - wondering what all the fuss is about now we have evidence Gordon Brown is human after all

I say that comes as a huge relief. Hell, I could name two or three dozen bloggers, off the top of my head,
who have built their reputations on exactly that interpretation of the
New Labour cabinet over the last few years. It’s just nice to see that
Gordon’s been part of the real world all this time.

The make-up of the Cabinet over the last ten years merely reflects
the dearth of talent, first class minds and imagination in British
politics. In turn, Brown’s attitude toward his colleagues is merely the
reflection - the admission - of that.

Gordon Brown is not - whatever Lord Turnbull
would have you believe - a Stalinist. Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili
at least advocated socialism in one country. That's one country more
than Mr Brown.

Guardian editor David Walker says that while Lord Turnbull's criticism of the chancellor is instructive, it is the civil service itself which must change: We must look beyond Brown

Once, someone in Turnbull's position would have thought structurally
and devoted their experience to a reflective critique of the system.
...Instead, he personalises the issue as if it were Brown at fault
rather than the system, which necessarily includes the culture and
capacity of the civil service.

It's as if he - along with Lord Butler and the former cabinet secretary Lord Wilson - want to deflect attention from the shortcomings of the senior civil service
in the 21st century. Blair and Brown are serial abusers of power - but
so are all prime ministers and chancellors. If what's changed is that
they get away with it, the explanation must lie with the absence of
checks and balances or the ineffectiveness of the machinery of state
beneath them. And that is surely the responsibility of cabinet
secretaries.

...This intervention shows just how much we need to re-arrange the way we are governed at
Westminster and in Whitehall. Let civil service reform start here.

Fair cop. But I doubt the need for civil service reform is the only issue raised here.

The worst-kept secret in Whitehall is that Gordon Brown hates to
delegate. The UK chancellor and probable next prime minister is known
across government for his reluctance to involve other ministers in
decisions. Now Lord Turnbull ..has offered a
unique public insight into how Mr Brown’s management style affects
policymaking.

...An
element of iron in the soul is necessary in politics. An incoming
government will often require a single-minded determination to fulfil
its agenda in the face of a bureaucracy resistant to new ideas.
Political leaders who bring about change of lasting significance, such
as Margaret Thatcher, need an uncompromising streak. Tony Blair himself
has a ruthless side.

Boldness can trump consultation. Mr Brown’s early
transfer of monetary policy to the Bank of England – one of the
landmarks of his time as chancellor – is an example.

For all that, the worrying aspect of Mr Brown’s style is his exclusion of
ministerial colleagues from matters in their own departmental domains,
and the reliance instead on a small, tightly-knit band of advisers
defined as much by their personal loyalty to the chancellor as their
political and administrative skills.

This has unfortunate results. It lessens the prospect that the policy will be followed
through successfully – a trademark flaw of this government. A
department and its minister are unlikely to be fully committed to
initiatives presented to them as Treasury faits accomplis...

In the absence of collective political decision-making, it also becomes harder
to assign responsibility for the implementation of policies. Much of
the story of the Blair/Brown government has been one of initiatives and
targets trumpeted and too easily forgotten.

...Mr Brown is a talented politician. Today’s Budget should remind us of the Iron
Chancellor’s formidable economic record of low inflation and steady
growth. But if he seeks to run the country as he has run the
Treasury he will fail. Mr Brown must learn to trust his colleagues and
share responsibility.

Lord Turnbull's accusations hardly come
out of the blue. The public knows, even if it hasn't heard it before
from such a senior civil servant, that over the years Mr Brown has had
a bit of a thing about being in control, and that he has never been the
most collegiate of ministers.

...Yet
it is misleading to cast Mr Brown as an ordinary command-and-control
politician, and downright unjust to label him a Stalinist. As the
chancellor never fails to remind us, he gave independence to the Bank
of England. As he may show again today, he prefers to influence the
economy - pretty successfully, most would agree - by sticks and carrots,
not direct edict.

Civil servants may have legitimate criticisms of this
government's ways of doing business over the past decade, as Anne
Perkins's current Radio 4 series is showing, but mandarins are rarely
comfortable when strong ministers and their advisers place themselves
firmly in the driving seat, as Mr Brown and his lieutenants have done.
Some of the jibes against Mr Brown go with the job; the Treasury is
never popular in other parts of Whitehall and secrecy is inevitably
part of the budget process.

...As Mr Brown embarks on the budget-day rituals for probably the final time
today, the question is whether he understands two things: first, that
prime ministers have no choice but to behave differently and, second,
that he personally has got something to prove.

...Mr Brown has floated the view that he can and
will act differently if he becomes prime minister: that he will
centralise less, devolve more and operate more openly. Mr Cameron will
taunt him that the man described by Lord Turnbull cannot change his
ways. Mr Brown has to understand how much it matters that he does and,
having understood, must do so.

Comments

Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is the fact that Blair can resign, and Brown can become Prime Minister all without any input from the voters.

It used to be the case that the King could dismiss his Ministers and appoint new ones without dissolving Parliament. Today, Ministers can appoint their own successors without consulting either the King or the People.

I always thought of this as a characteristic of Soviet Bloc Peoples' Democracies.

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